Last week’s announcement at VMware highlights the continued innovation seen in the end-user computing space, and how important our virtualized or remoted desktop and application solutions are to delivering enterprise workspace mobility, security and business agility.

Industry-Leading Desktop Virtualization

Delivering virtualized or remoted desktops and applications with an exceptional user experience that scales, is central to what

Cisco and VMware have a long, distinguished history of collaboration in delivering a complete solution for virtual desktop implementers and their end users.

The Results Speak for Themselves

I’m especially pleased with how our joint solution has delivered industry-leading results. If you check out the infographic shown here, you’ll see just a couple proof points of how Cisco UCS with VMware Horizon (with View) has dramatically moved the needle in terms of TCO, performance and end-user experience.

Our joint customers are using this industry-leading solution to:

Realize greater employee mobility

Deliver greater flexibility and choice through BYOD

Optimize business workflow and increase agility

Help ensure business continuity and data security

Reduce client computing costs

Why is Cisco UCS the Best Compute Platform for Desktop Virtualization?

The roster of testimonials in support of the Cisco Desktop Virtualization Solution is growing at a rapid clip. Some great proof points of this success can be found in the case studies we’ve published, across a wide array of industry verticals and deployment scenarios.

Core to the success of these deployments is Cisco UCS. Why? If you’ve followed our journey that started five years ago, you already know that we created a compute platform purpose-built for scalable, high-performance virtualization, free of the limitations and encumbrances of traditional compute architectures. For VDI and app delivery, Cisco UCS offers the perfect balance of:

Congratulations to VMware on the release of Horizon 6. Our companies have jointly set our sights on driving success for our customers with desktop and app virtualization. Our joint solution founded on Cisco UCS and VMware Horizon is enabling our customers to embrace the transformation of their desktops and applications into mobile workspaces, and we look forward to continued joint innovation in this space.

AMD is improving user experiences across a wide variety of platforms including VMware Horizon 6. AMD designs and integrates technology for the new era of computing. AMD technology powers all the leading consumer gaming console solutions ensuring our GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) technology leadership. In the professional graphics market we deliver high performance GPU-based compute solutions using open standards like OpenCL while also delivering industry-leading SPECviewperf 12 performance for workstation graphics solutions. At AMD we want to deliver enterprise-ready GPU technologies not just to standalone workstations and servers but also to users of Horizon 6.

AMD GPU products drive a better user experience for desktop and application delivery. Horizon 6 perfectly blends the needs of the enterprise with a great end-user experience, enhancing that user experience In Horizon 6 with GPU technology is a key area AMD is focusing on.

You may not have heard of AMD GPUs being used in VMware Horizon products. Let’s clarify that right now. AMD has a fully certified vSphere 5.5 solution with vSGA (virtual shared graphics acceleration) graphics delivery. Plus we are investing further to bring even more capabilities to Horizon 6 and current VMware View users.

AMD offers products to address the needs of Horizon 6 users. Our FirePro S Series products provide data center-ready GPUs and when combined with our Sky Technology software we deliver a solution that is ready for vSphere and Horizon. Our workstation AMD FirePro product range will also be enabled to support workstation use cases in Horizon 6 environments.

vSGA: Shared Graphics for Knowledge Worker UsersUsing an AMD FirePro S series GPU for servers brings exceptional GPU performance to knowledge worker users when used with our Sky Technology vSGA VIB driver. This brings DirectX capabilities to mainstream VDI knowledge worker users in a cost effective manner using VMware’s vSGA technology with VDI desktops. Knowledge worker users are coming from platforms that had either an integrated or enterprise GPU, it’s therefore essential to have the option to bring better GPU capabilities to users who will need it. You have users who on occasion use imaging and desktop publishing and you also have power users who build presentations or other business collateral where graphics performance helps deliver results. Putting a more cost effective AMD FirePro S series GPU allows those select users to access a GPU that is virtualized by VMware’s vSGA technology across all servers. This allows for technologies like vMotion to be used to ensure better uptime and support for DR scenarios.

With AMD FirePro S series you can afford to deploy our entry level AMD FirePro S7000 on ALL VDI servers ensuring user satisfaction on Horizon deployments.

Beyond vSGAAMD is working with VMware on new technologies, including vDGA (virtual dedicated graphics acceleration), to deliver workstation-class GPU performance to Horizon platforms. AMD is also developing solutions for multi-user support from a single GPU. Stay tuned! Like the choices you have on storage and networking in your deployments, AMD is here to bring choice to GPUs. This helps your Horizon 6 deployments exceed your users expectations.

Cloud Pod Architecture and Multi-Data-Center View in Horizon 6

One of the key features of the Horizon Cloud Pod Architecture is the high availability and scale-out of virtual desktops in VMware Horizon 6. Many of you may have heard about this feature referred to as Linked-Mode View or Multi-Data-Center View or Federated View Pods. All of these mean the same thing.

Today, virtual desktops provided by Horizon can be deployed using a block and pod architecture, or design. (Refer to sections titled View Building Blocks and View Pods in the View Architecture Planning Guide.) A single View pod can contain up to five View blocks, can scale up to 10,000 (10K) desktops, and can be deployed in a single data center. Customers looking to scale beyond 10K desktops can deploy multiple View pods. However, each View pod is an independent entity that has its own user entitlements and is managed separately. With the new Horizon 6 Cloud Pod Architecture, customers can aggregate multiple View pods in either the same data center or different data centers and entitle users to a desktop in any location.

Now, let’s look at an example that describes this feature in its entirety. Figure 1 below shows two View pods—Pod 1 and Pod 2. Pod 1 is located in a data center in the United States, and Pod 2 is located in a data center in India. Each pod has two connection brokers—VCS1 and VCS2 in Pod 1, VCS3 and VCS4 in Pod 2. Both Pod 1 and Pod 2 maintain their own user entitlements, which provide a mapping of an end user to a virtual desktop in the respective pod. The new architecture in Horizon 6 introduces two new elements:

A global entitlement layer which spans multiple pods (shown as a single layer spanning Pod 1 and Pod 2 in the diagram)

An inter-pod communication layer (shown with a bi-directional arrow between Pod 1 and Pod 2 in the diagram)

This new architecture provides three major benefits:

Support for active-active deployments – Customers who have multiple data centers can now leverage all the data-center assets efficiently. They can entitle users to desktops either in one or in multiple data centers.

Consolidation of multiple pods within a single data center – Multiple pods of desktops within the same data center can be consolidated and managed centrally through a single global user-entitlement layer.

Disaster recovery – The global user-entitlement layer can be used to assign a user to desktops in both Pod 1 and Pod 2. If Pod 1 were to become unavailable either due to a data-center failure or to another form of failure, the user could always get to a desktop in Pod 2. It is important to note that this feature assumes that the desktops in Pod 1 and Pod 2 are replicated using some form of data-replication technology.

Figure 1: Cloud Pod Architecture with Pod 1 in U.S. and Pod 2 in India

Brokering a Desktop in a Cloud Pod Architecture

Figure 1 conceptually illustrates how two View pods can be used to entitle users to desktops in different data centers. Brokering a desktop to a user who logs in from any location follows the simple workflow below:

1. The end user enters the URL or IP address for their View environment, which can be an address of a View Connection Server (broker) or a load balancer, and enters their credentials.

2. The broker looks up both local and global entitlements for the user.

3. The broker gets the current desktop state via inter-pod protocol and returns a list of desktops to the client.

4. The user selects a desktop.

5. If the desktop is remote, the broker launches the remote desktop via inter-pod protocol.

6. The client connects to the remote desktop directly or via a local tunnel.

The top use cases for end-user desktop access are as follows:

Global roaming desktop – This is a use case where the end user needs access to a desktop only to access their Windows-based applications. An end user can be located either in India or the U.S. with an entitlement to a nonpersistent desktop pool. The end user gets a desktop in their connected pod (that is, close to their client location—If they connect from India, they get a desktop in India).

Global home desktop – This is the typical case where the end user wants to get the same persistent desktop every time they request access, irrespective of their location. To accomplish this, persistent desktop pools in all pods need to be set up. The FromHome policy can be used to direct the user back to their home site. The end user gets the same desktop machine irrespective of which pod they are connected to.

Local scale desktop – In this use case, each site has multiple pods, each offering a standard nonpersistent desktop pool. A global entitlement layer provided by Cloud Pod Architecture joins all these pools together. Using the site’s Scope policy, one can control and limit access to a desktop that is available within the site.

Global Entitlement

The global entitlement layer controls the mapping of end users to desktops in a Cloud Pod Architecture. Global entitlement consists of a set of parameters as shown in Figure 2:

Figure 2: Global Entitlement in the Cloud Pod Architecture

Following are the various parameters of global entitlement:

Name – Name of the global entitlement

Members – The users and/or groups that share the global entitlement

Desktops – Desktops that the members of the global entitlement are entitled to

Scope – Controls the scope of search when placing a new desktop session. This allows the administrator to control the amount of cross-data-center traffic.

FromHome (true/false) – This controls where the desktop search is started. When false, it starts from the current pod; when true, it starts from the user’s home site.

The scope can be one of:

Local – Look only in the local pod for available desktops

Site – Look in all pods in the local site (typically in the same data center)

All – Look across all pods for an available desktop to service the request

The search order favors local resources, starting in the same pod that the user connected to, then extending to the same site, and then across the entire linked environment. In addition to this default search order, administrators can nominate a home site for a single user or for a group of users. When a global entitlement has the FromHome policy set, the search for a new desktop is started in the user’s home site and not the current connected pod. This ensures that, where needed, the desktop session remains close to any backend resources it needs.

Scale Limits and Maximums

The Cloud Pod Architecture was developed with the goal of scaling View desktop deployments to hundreds of data centers and tens of thousands of desktops. To deliver this capability in time for product launch, the VMware team has done a phenomenal job of validating this feature by focusing the testing efforts on the following scale-out parameters:

Number of pods – 4

Number of sites – 2

Number of desktops – 20,000

This scale is just the beginning, and the team at VMware is committed to increasing these numbers over the next few releases.

Architectural Assumptions

A number of architectural assumptions have been made in delivering this feature:

The deployment can have both persistent (stateful) and nonpersistent (stateless) desktops

A third-party load balancer such as Geographic DNS or a similar product provides the single-URL capability

Replication of desktops or end-user data is provided by a third-party data replication technology

WAN links between data centers are sufficiently provisioned and have good latency characteristics—however, the feature works on low-bandwidth, high-latency connections and does not impose either a latency drag or additional bandwidth. It is important to note that user experience varies with both the latency and the bandwidth between data centers.

All pods are accessible to each other across the corporate network

As you can see, the Horizon Cloud Pod Architecture further advances end-user mobility by delivering desktops from any data center in any geographic location. This is just the beginning of the journey to the hybrid DaaS era!

By Warren Ponder, Director of Product Management, End-User Computing, VMware and Pat Lee, Director of End-User Clients, End-User Computing, VMwareToday, I am really excited to share another exciting project I was to be asked to support our team in delivering, with the announcement of Horizon 6. One of the many new capabilities that will be available is application remoting of RDS hosted apps and extended capabilities for RDS based desktops.

There’s been some speculation and many experts have had some really good questions about how, what and why we are doing this so I wanted to provide some color to many of the questions I know people have.

Why Application Remoting now?

Several factors came into play in our decision but the primary factor was customer demand. We spent a lot of time with customers across the globe that included all sizes, levels of expertise, and stages of their journey toward a mobile-cloud vision. We didn’t focus on what we already knew about application remoting, but how customers were actually using app remoting today – what they like, don’t like, and the role they see it playing in the future. We wanted to make sure we understood how their needs around app remoting had evolved so we could introduce the appropriate improvements.

With the increase of mobile devices and cloud services, the mobile-cloud era is upon us. It’s changing the landscape. More than ever customers are looking for simplicity and converged infrastructure. They look to VMware as a strategic partner to deliver SDDC and EUC capabilities supporting their Hybrid Cloud efforts. Working closely with customers it was made clear to us that delivering a single platform that converges virtual desktops, RDS hosted apps, SaaS apps, virtualized ThinApps and even third party solutions such as Citrix XenApp is what customers needed to be successful. This all needs to be possible though a unified workspace that gives their users one place to go for access and consumption.

Building upon what we already have

Some have speculated it would take years for us to build anything serious but that was not the case when adding this capability into VMware Horizon 6 because we had most of what was needed to support App Remoting for some time. Let’s take a look at some of the key components for on-prem or hybrid cloud deployments supporting app remoting:

Session Brokering, Load Balancing and Cloud Pods

Orchestration

Resource bursting, VM migration and Elasticity

Image management and provisioning

Blast and Blast with PCoIP remoting protocol

Broad set of clients for different access devices

Monitoring and Management

Integration with RDSH (Remote Desktop Session Host)

Support for RDS or Terminal Server based desktops has always existed in Horizon View. Expanding upon our existing support, we worked closely with Microsoft to build our own protocol provider for RDS. With our own protocol provider we are able to integrate our graphics and protocol stacks such as Blast with PCoIP. This also allows us to eventually enable other remoting capabilities we provide with the Blast user experience on virtual desktops

This is the only proper, supported, way to integrate with Microsoft RDS. Although it’s not an easy undertaking, it provides several benefits. Windows OS and other capabilities unique to RDSH like fair share CPU scheduling, or IP virtualization are all supported. Applications that need session level information, leveraging WTS API’s all work without ISV’s having to do anything special or unfamiliar. Administrators familiar with managing or designing RDSH based desktop or app remoting solutions will feel right at home.

Providing a seamless remoted app experience

A key component of remoting apps is seamless windows. This is the ability to remote one or more applications to the user. Applications should have the behavior and experience of running locally. Two of our personal desktop products, Fusion and Workstation have provided a similar feature for years called Unity. Unity seamlessly integrates applications running in a local VM with the host operating system. Building upon this, we extended it to remotely display applications across networks.

Today, we bring all of our experience making Windows apps run well on multiple platforms with Horizon 6 and deliver an amazing Windows remote application experience for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android users.

From Windows XP SP3 to Windows 8.1 Update 1, the Windows client delivers a great remote application experience for Windows users. With individual applications that have seamless windows in the task bar, jumplist integration and favorites, and the ability to save desktop shortcuts for apps and desktops, the Windows client makes it’s easy to get to your apps and desktops when you want them.

Mac users get the most seamless way to run remote Windows applications. Use common Mac keyboard shortcuts for cut, copy, and paste. Windows applications show up as individual applications on the dock and you can quit individual Windows applications or open windows using standard Mac keyboard shortcuts. Finally, you can leverage Mission Control to switch to any open Windows application or

window and much more.

On iOS and Android, swipe to bring up the intuitive sidebar to switch between open application windows, close a specific open window or application, or easily open a new application.

Integration across Horizon 6

Integration with VMware View is seamless and strait forward. Customers can upgrade existing environments and instantly have the ability to remote RDSH hosted desktops or apps. The only thing needed is the RDSH servers.

View provides ability to create farms, which are groups of RDSH servers hosting apps or desktops. Within View, app pools are created and used to organize application entitlement for users or groups. App Pools can be created automatically using applications discovered across farms. Unique apps that are not registered or started using scripts can also be created manually. Apps can mixed with hosts serving RDSH desktops. Apps can come from multiple farms and a user can also access multiple apps simultaneously.

Users will be able to access their RDS hosted apps or desktops using devices from our broad ecosystem of device partners and the Horizon Client for Windows, Mac, iOS or Android. A client for Linux will also be available soon.

A unified workspace is possible though Horizon Workspace integration. Users can access their SaaS, ThinApps, RDS hosted apps, even apps from Citrix XenApp from one, unified workspace that provides a consistent experience across any device.

Enhanced Management

Need some management? The vCenter Operations team has expanded vCenter operations to include support for RDSH hosts, including integration with PCoIP stats monitoring on a per session basis from RDSH.

In support of our hybrid cloud delivery, all components of Horizon 6 have been built with a focus on flexibility to ensure that customers can choose on-premise or off-premise or both to deliver a common and consistent experience to their end users from a single Horizon client.

As you can see, a lot of work went into adding this capability to Horizon 6 but we truly believe customers will find that our unified approach and support for all types of applications and desktops can save them time, money and spare them a lot of headaches.

VMware announce the availability of VMware Horizon DaaS, built on vCloud Hybrid Service. VMware Horizon DaaS provides Windows desktops and applications as a cloud service, to any device, anywhere, with a predictable monthly subscription.

Why DaaS?

The demand for cloud-hosted virtual desktops has reached a tipping point. We’re seeing a variety of factors contribute to this demand. End users are more diverse than ever before and they want to work from anywhere, on any device. IT is under a ton of pressure to enable this diverse, mobile workforce to get work done and that means being able to access corporate data, applications and resources. It’s now IT’s job to balance these requirements with security, operational simplicity and at the same time control cost.

Virtual desktops have emerged as a great solution as they enable desktops to be centrally located, yet accessed from anywhere on any device. Yet for many customers, on-premise virtual desktop infrastructure does not meet their needs. They may not have the upfront capital to get up and running, or the IT skills to deploy and operate the infrastructure. Or they lack the agility to get from zero to desktop in days versus months.

That’s where Horizon DaaS comes in. Horizon DaaS enables IT to move towards an OPEX model that eliminates capital outlay and enables them to pay only for what they use. Since VMware provides the support and management of the underlying DaaS infrastructure, minimal expertise is required. And with a cloud service, you gain the flexibility to scale up/down as business needs change.

Customer requirements for DaaS

With DaaS garnering so much attention, many providers are trying to stake claim to delivering desktops-as-a-service. Don’t be fooled. Having pioneered the concept of desktop-as-a-service in 2007, we know from customers that to deliver a successful DaaS offering, you need to:

Deliver a great end user experience on any device

Provide access to genuine Windows Client desktops

Build your service from the ground up for the cloud

Provide enterprise grade service and support

Market-leading DaaS with Horizon DaaS

Only VMware Horizon DaaS delivers on all of these requirements:

Adaptive end-user experience – Through the power of Horizon View Client and Blast, Horizon DaaS provides a premium experience that adapts to changing network conditions. And we support access from any device, whether it be a zero client, thin client, PC, Mac, tablet, phone or even from a browser or Google Chromebook. And we make it easy to access Windows desktops from a mobile device with features such as gestures and easy access to frequently used files and applications. It’s the reason why Gartner recently recognized Horizon View Client for delivering a great experience from any device, anywhere.

Full Windows Client virtual desktops – Although Horizon DaaS provides Windows Server hosted desktops like other vendors in the marketplace; our experience has told us that customers prefer full Windows Client virtual desktop. With Windows Client desktops on Horizon DaaS we can provide the end-user experience, application compatibility, and security that enterprises require.

Built for the cloud from the ground up – While other vendors have tried to stitch their on-premise VDI products together, put them in the cloud and call them DaaS, Horizon DaaS was built for cloud from the get go. It’s built on a multi-tenant grid architecture that was designed for cloud-scale.

Enterprise-grade service, support, and SLA – Feedback from our customers is clear: they expect enterprise-grade service and they want to know that when they have an issue they can get someone on the phone to help them 24×7. With VMware Horizon DaaS you gain access to the proven expertise of specialists that know how to run cloud-hosted desktops at scale with integrated 24×7 phone support and a 99.9% SLA.

And with VMware, customers get access to the only vendor that can deliver hybrid DaaS: on-premise and cloud-hosted virtual desktops. IT gets greater flexibility to choose the option that works best for them, while providing end users a single client that spans any cloud.

Can you imagine trying to write an email at a desktop computer and having to wait 10 seconds for the screen to refresh after typing in every sentence? It would drive you nuts, not to mention reduce your productivity tremendously. That’s the kind of user experience that architects and engineers at SSOE Group were having when trying to work from different locations collaboratively on highly-complex 3D models.

SSOE Group is an Engineering, Procurement and Construction Management (EPCM) firm with 1200 employees located in 29 offices across 7 countries. SSOE leverages the best talent that they have to complete client projects – no matter where that talent is located – which requires global collaboration in a 3D environment.

SSOE selected a solution utilizing VMware Horizon View™, Cisco, and NVIDIA to deliver the 3D graphics performance required for applications such as Autodesk Revit to collaboratively complete projects in a virtualized desktop environment.

To learn more about the VMware, Cisco and NVIDIA solution, check out this short video profiling SSOE’s experience or read through this solution brief.

VMware has released the RDP VC Bridge SDK. This SDK is intended for ISVs who have applications that today run on Microsoft RDP using the RDP WTS APIs.

By simply recompiling and linking their code with the header and library files included in the SDK, ISVs can quickly enable their applications to run over the PCoIP protocol on VMware Horizon View.

As VMware Horizon View is the VDI market leader, this opens up a whole new market for ISVs who have previously been unable to closely integrate their products with Horizon View.

For VMware customers, this SDK expands the partner ecosystem. New partners can now bring in functionality to expand your Horizon View functionality into new use cases.

One of the use cases for this SDK is in healthcare. In hospitals ECG and blood pressure devices are used to monitor the health of patients. These devices can be attached to a laptop next to the bed. Software on the laptop can be used to monitor things like heartbeat. For a central monitoring in a hospital control room the software can be installed on a Microsoft Remote Desktop Services server or a Citrix XenApp server.

The protocol must devices support are ICA and RDP.

To be able to use PCoIP to use the healthcare software remotely the VMware RDPVCBridge comes in handy.

There are many third-party, off-the-shelf plug-ins that are written for RDP virtual channels.

According to MSDN: “Virtual channels are software extensions that can be used to add functional enhancements to a Remote Desktop Services application. Examples of functional enhancements might include: support for special types of hardware, audio, or other additions to the core functionality provided by the Remote Desktop Services Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). The RDP protocol provides multiplexed management of multiple virtual channels.”

RDP Virtual channels are used for copy/paste between remote session and local device, for printing, for USB traffic to local device, for COM port remapping and many more.

Converting plug-ins to work over PCoIP requires a significant effort. In addition, it becomes necessary to maintain two versions of the plug-in, one for each protocol. RDPVCBridge solves both of these problems by providing a bridge between the RDP virtual channels and the PCoIP virtual channels. RDPVCBridge allows the application to work over both the RDP and the PCoIP protocols. It detects whether the application is running in an RDP or a PCoIP context and chooses the protocol accordingly.

RDP provides Windows Terminal Services (WTS) API for virtual channels. VMware PCoIP provides a different API for virtual channels. Without RDPVCBridge-SDK, you must rewrite RDP virtual channel plugins in order to use the VMware PCoIP virtual channel API. The rewrite effort can be significant.

RDPVCBridge-SDK makes it much easier to enhance RDS virtual channel applications to support both RDP and PCoIP

This SDK is free and public. To obtain technical support for the use of the SDK, Paid Development Consulting is available on request. Please contact us at Horizon-View-RDPVCBridge-SDK-Support@vmware.com for more information.

The document provides a step-by-step guide on how to deploy a Microsoft Lync 2013 client on a VMware Horizon Viewdesktop along with a Lync VDI plugin on a Windows client.
By doing so, customers can leverage the power of the Lync VDI plugin to make rich voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) and videoconferencing calls without negatively affecting the datacenter server or network.

The document will help partners and customers understand and avoid some common mistakes when deploying the Microsoft Lync 2013 client and Lync VDI plugin with Horizon View desktops.

Some common pitfalls when deploying the Lync 2013 client and Lync VDI plugin include:

Knowing what is and is not supported

Downloading/installing the correct software

Misconfiguration of Lync 2013 server and client and Lync VDI plugin

Windows client misconfiguration

Follow up questions

If you have additional questions regarding the deployment of the Lync 2013 client and Lync VDI plugin with Horizon View 5.2 desktops, please post your questions to our community page.